EVERLASTING FLOWERS.

Press, Volume XLV, Issue 7158, 20 September 1888, Page 3

EVERLASTING FLOWERS.

The following interesting account of a trade which is but little known to the general public is from the pen of the Cape correspondent of a San Francisco paper. The writer does not mention the names of the flowers, but they are, no doubt, chiefly various kinds of Helichrysum, with a few species of Aphelexis, Helipterum and Xeran them urn.

" The mountains known as the Draken- I stein range, about fifty miles from Cape Town, is where the majority of Everlasting Flowers are procured. The Kaffirs and their families gather them and bring them to the country storekeepers, who buy them by the measureful, which contains about 100, and for which they pay the Kaffir one farthing. The storekeeper generally prepares himself for the flower season by making a rough dryinghouse, which is nothing more than a long shed about 8 feet high and 25 feet wide, from the ceiling of which he suspends rows of string about 1 foot apart, and which reach to the ground: he next ties the flowers into bundles of 100 each and then attaches two dozen or more of these bundles along the string from the ceiling to the floor. The warm wind passing through the shed dries these strings or flowers in a few days. Were they left to dry in the sun they would fall to pieces the moment they were roughly handled. When he has dried sufficient to fill a few cases he sends them to Cape Town, where they are sold by auction along with other consignments, and are bought by the merchants, who ship them to England and America. . "There are exported from the Cape Colony annually about 50,000 cases of Everlasting Flowers, valued at something like £250,000, fully one half of which are shipped to New York and Boston direct. This will give some idea of the enormous Quantity that grows and the number of Kaffirs engaged in gathering them. " The Kaffirs who gather these flowers are those half-civilised men who live j about the outskirts of the country villages. So soon as the winter rains are over the Kaffir men begin polishing their old flintlock guns that they have bought by twelve months',labour—this is the usual way that the Boer pays his Kaffir servant—and they and their families start off to the mountains to gather Everlasting Flowers. The women and children, however, have to do all the hard work. .-■-' I once saw a party start off on a flower gathering expedition,and they madesuch a comical scene, that I am not likely soon to forget it. Their road lay along the most unfrequented paths, and the poor children.very scantily dressed, and more often wearing no clothing at all, get their bodies and feet badly bruised and torn by the thorns and sharp stones they must travel over. There is one thorn bush. in particular that is peculiar to South Africa, and is such a source of annoyance to the traveller, that it is called the ' Wachenbechi Bosch' or ' Wait-a-bit Bush.' It is a low-lying bush with long slender limbs coverea with fine thorns which blbwabdut in the.breeze and have a peculiar, way of reaching one and holding one" too,' unless you wish to have your clothing torn from your back. In many instances the women risk their lives in obtaining a few choice flowers, and frequently I have seen them on the verge of a precipice where few white men would dare to tread. At such times the women join hands and so enable the daring one to reach over and obtain the coveted flowers."